Forward
by Nausicaa Smith
Summary: The Vizard recover in hiding under Urahara's care after escaping from Soul Society.
1. Chapter 1

She awoke, ice cold, from a dream that may have been from when she was living. Strange yet familiar faces swam up from her memory, soothing words in calm voices, a soft female hand upon her face. She knew she was about to wake, and she resisted. It was far too cold to be conscious. Her fingers were numb and she shivered violently—and yet within her head and heart was a powerful heat, and she could feel the sweat running down through her hair and the dampness of her clothing. Yes, it would be better to sleep.

It might have been minutes or days later when she woke again, still damp but not cold this time. She was burning hot, her skin was on fire. Instinctively she knew that if something wasn't done that she would die, and she couldn't die before she had dealt revenge in full to... who was it again? She managed to open her eyes, and found a vaguely familiar boyish face floating above her, with concerned grey eyes and flyaway blonde hair. Gentle hands drew away blankets and covers from her body, and something cold pressed against her face. She slept again.

"Be still."

She knew that voice. Shinji was at her side, his hands holding her firmly in place on the futon. She made to kick him, but found moving too difficult and her vision too blurry. What the hell? Since when had Shinji been able to control her?

"Your fever just broke a while ago, Hiyori."

She knew that voice too, and turned her head sharply to find Kisuke sitting on her other side. His smooth face was creased this time with worry. His Captain's uniform was gone, replaced with plain knit pants and a sweatshirt. Kisuke wasn't a big man, but his broad, careful hands seemed to exaggerate how small her wrist was as he reached down to check her pulse.

Memory came rushing back to her—Aizen, the disappearances, Ichimaru Gin, the forest, Yoruichi, Tessai. Being chained down in a dark room, battling her inner demons in order to control her own mind. How many days ago had that been?

"I'm going to go check on the others." said Shinji. "I'll be back in a few." He stood and exited the room. Now that Hiyori looked at it, she realized it wasn't familiar at all. It was wide with paper walls, a desk on one wall, and the light coming through the windows made it airy and sunny.

"Where are we?" her voice sounded ragged to her ears.

"The real world. They exiled me, and they were going to kill all of you, remember?" oh, yes. She remembered. "You've been ill ever since the basement, but now your fever is down and I think you'll be alright in a few days. I'm sorry about all this."

Sorry people pissed Hiyori off. Kisuke really pissed Hiyori off. A sorry Kisuke was too much for Hiyori's feverish mind to cope with. Before she knew it the rage had consumed her, and she was off the bed and drop-kicking Kisuke in the head.

"Sorry?" she shouted, her head pounding with every syllable. "You think sorry is going to help anything?"

"It's my fault. I should have gone to investigate myself, and not left everything to you." His nose was bleeding. Clearly she wasn't as weakened as she'd thought upon waking.

"If you'd gone you'd have been turned into a Hollow, and then who'd have saved us, dickhead? Nobody, that's fucking who!" She lunged at him, but found herself caught up from behind by a pair of strong arms, and momentarily she was thrown over Shinji's shoulder and being carried away.

"Simmer down, bitch." he said, grinning that ridiculous grin of his. "Let's go put you in the bath, you smell like ass."

"What? Hell no, you're not helping me take a bath, you perv shithead!" struggling, however, was no use. Her momentary burst of strength had been wasted on pounding Kisuke.

"Don't be stupid, stupid. I'm not interested in seeing your underdeveloped girl parts anyway. You can't take a bath alone cuz you might fall and crack your head open." And before she could protest the "underdeveloped" crack, she found herself deposited into a cold porcelain tub. Shinji grabbed the back of her oversized shirt and pulled it up and over her head. To Hiyori's surprise, that was all she'd been wearing.

Shinji turned on the water. "I'll sit over here in the doorway. You scrub. Can't have your germs getting all over the place now that you're mobile, can we?"

"Asswipe."

"Skank." Shinji turned around to stand in the hallway, leaving the door open so she could see his back. He was dressed in a green silk shirt and slacks. Hiyori had seen the back of him plenty of times, but had never actually seen his back.

"Shinji! What happened to your hair?"

"You yanked some of it out in the basement, so it wasn't even anymore. I cut it off." He didn't turn to face her. Hiyori couldn't remember a thing that had happened in the basement except that she'd been in there, but she felt guilty nevertheless. But before she could open her mouth to apologize for what would have been the first time ever, Shinji spoke. "Don't worry about it. You're here, you've got control of yourself. It will grow back. Now scrub."

Sighing, Hiyori turned off the water and found a washcloth and soap on the rim of the tub. The water felt good on her fevered, aching muscles. She scrubbed as hard as she could, until her skin was raw and pink. !-- page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --She felt that she'd always be dirty now, tainted by the Hollow within her. No amount of soap could clean it away. "Did Kisuke patch me up?" she asked, untangling her pigtails.

"He did. We owe him a lot, so stop attacking him. We'd be dead, or Hollows, without his intervention." Shinji's ability to speak three whole sentences without antagonizing Hiyori told her that he was in a foul mood indeed.

"I know." she said, turning more serious herself. "It's just, none of this is very fair. How could Room 46 just decide to abandon us like that?"

"I suppose it's understandable. After all, they had no way of knowing we wouldn't be permanent Hollows."

"They could have tried. They could have listened to Kisuke." Hiyori had thought it would taste bitter to defend her captain, but she was surprised that it seemed natural in spite of her resentment. After all, he had saved them. Perhaps he wasn't such a douche after all.

"All the evidence pointed to him. And that's my fault, for not paying more attention to Aizen."

"You couldn't have known what he was up to." Hiyori rinsed the soap from her hair and pulled the plug, feeling oddly subdued. Defeated. "If he hadn't planted a decoy of himself he'd have found another way. I always knew he was a snake." She focused on the water draining away, a tiny, soapy whirlpool. It may as well have been her former life draining away.

"Maybe not. We'll never know though. In any case, our only option is to move forward." Shinji threw a towel over her and got a grip on her arm. For some reason, being handled so didn't faze her, and she allowed him to maneuver her carefully out of the tub and sit her down on a towel in the floor so she could dry off without the danger of falling. He left her to dry and returned a second later with pajamas and a hair brush, then returned to the doorway.

"So, what are we going to do? Have you guys formed a plan while I was out?" she asked his back. She couldn't get over the fact that she could see it, that it wasn't covered by that curtain of long, unnaturally straight blonde hair.

"Well, now that we're in our right minds for the most part, we're hiding out here in the real world until Urahara and Tessai can think of something. We've all pooled our money together and rented this building to stay in. It's not going to be an extravagant life, but we've got food and clothes and soap. I imagine some of us can get jobs to keep ourselves busy. Kisuke's got Yoruichi sneaking stuff out of his lab and bringing it here so he can get to work."

"Hmm." Hiyori wobbled up beside him, brushing her wet hair out. He put a hand at the back of her neck to steady her and they walked down the hall together, back toward her sick room where Kisuke had changed her bedding and set out a bowl of broth with some crackers for her.

Kisuke himself seemed to be talking to a black cat that was sitting on the window sil. Lisa was standing next to them, dressed in pajamas like Hiyori's, taking notes on a clipboard. She looked well enough, all things considered.

"I suppose they'll be looking to replace all the captains and lieutenants they've lost?" he asked it. The cat nodded.

Wait, no it didn't. Cats didn't nod.

"Well, if Aizen's been put in Shinji's place as Captain, at least it'll be easier to keep an eye on him. It's easier to track the movements of someone in a high rank than someone who can disappear without being noticed. I wonder if it's really him, though, or if it's his double. Can't be sure, I don't know the fellow that well."

Shinji spoke up: "I imagine it's him. With all the chaos that's probably going on, he can't afford to have any mistakes made or overlook any details." Lisa scribbled on her clipboard.

"Probably." said the cat. "I've got my people watching him, in any case."

Hiyori decided she'd eat later. Moving forward or not, it was clearly time to go back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

For a long time it seemed that they weren't moving forward so much as they were moving sideways.

The warehouse they'd rented, they decided to buy. After all, it was big enough for all of them to live in comfortable space from one another without being too far away. The main floor of the warehouse had become their gathering place. After all that had happened, none of them really wanted to be alone. Kisuke had fixed up another dimension in the basement and they'd taken to sparring there in the mornings and evenings. Four of the eight had gotten jobs and managed to blend in well with the real world's society. The other four spent their days cleaning the warehouse—after all, their own homes in Soul Society had been spotless—or helping Kisuke with his research.

The years passed this way, quiet and uniform. The group of former captains and lieutenants became a group of companions and good friends. Shinji decided to keep his hair short for a while. Love kept a pair of white mice as pets in his room. Kisuke bought a store on the other side of town that catered to the needs of Shinigami that couldn't or wouldn't be met by Soul Society. Some of them were highly illegal, it seemed. He came to them weekly with whatever news he'd heard from his customers, and sometimes Hiyori visited him there to see his new inventions.

Kisuke kept up with his research into how to rid them of the Hollows, but it seemed there was nothing to be done. He was always trying something, always researching something, but had yet to find a cure. In the meantime, they had all come to accept that the Hollow was a part of them and that if they couldn't beat it, they could at least join it. They practiced holding the transformation for longer, practiced using Hollow powers like the Cero. Secretly they thanked Aizen for the new and interesting powers they had—and they cursed them for the life and the family and friends that had been stolen away from them.

Sometimes, it seemed that they had settled into a normal life in the real world. They watched television, read manga, listened to the radio. Mashiro became a great cook, Kensei mastered all the martial arts taught in the real world, and Hachigen learned to program computers. Sometimes, when Lisa was caught in a compromising position with a carrot in the laundry room, or when Shinji could be found shaving Hiyori's eyebrows off in the dead of night, things seemed average. They had become a family of sorts. On some days, when the talking cat was asleep in a sunbeam on the windowsill and Kisuke was beating Hiyori at Mario Cart, you wouldn't suspect.

The years could hide their true intentions; the time gave them the ability to wait quietly for that opportune moment. You'd almost forget who they were, or who they had been. They would take the news from Soul Society about Aizen's rebellion and the theft of the Hogyoku with a blank stare and pursed lips. Hiyori's red jumpsuit no longer reflected her lieutenant status. Shinji's checkered tie didn't symbolize his might as a Captain of the 13 Protection Squads. They would go about their lives as if the goings on in Soul Society mattered not. It was easy to forget, when all you could see was the surface.

On the surface they were bickering over the last cookie or who was folding the towels this time. On the surface, Hachigen was flaming someone on a message board at 2 am and Kensei was practicing yoga on the roof. On the surface, someone pissed on the toilet seat, someone had used up all the hot water, and someone forgot to shut the refrigerator door.

On the surface, you couldn't see the calculating way that Kisuke looked up into the sky every morning when he awoke.

Or the cold cruelty hidden behind Hiyori's usually blustering, boisterous fits of rage.

Or the hardness in Rose's delicate hands, always perfectly manicured.

Or the sharpness of Shinji's blade, hidden under his bed.

The Vizard had patience. They would bide their time, plotting cunning plots and cutting schemes. They would lay low and keep quiet, battling their inner demons and resting assured that they could wait forever if need be. They would go to work. They would sweep the floors and cook dinner. They would spar in the basement until they couldn't stand. Hiyori would beat up some guy who drew graffiti on the outside of the warehouse with a joyful glint in her green eyes. Mashiro would throw a tantrum when her favorite red marker went missing.

They would wait.

Until one bright and sunny afternoon when Kisuke and the talking cat would tell Shinji and Hiyori over tea about the impossible story of a boy called Kurosaki Ichigo. Kurosaki Ichigo, who along with three human companions had broken in to Seireitei and rescued a member of the Kuchiki clan who'd been sentenced to death. Who'd fought the Kenpachi and lived to tell about it. Who had an illegal Mod Soul hidden in his room, to protect it from being exterminated. Who had won the trust of all 13 Captains of the Protection Squads. And whose soul had tread into Hollow territory. If they wanted anybody on their side in the fight against Aizen, Kisuke would say while brushing that flyaway blonde hair from his eyes, they would want Kurosaki Ichigo. So they would find him. They would train him up to control the Hollow within him, to use that power to his advantage rather than letting it take over his mind.

And one day, Aizen would show his face again. And then all hell would break loose.

But until then, here they would be. Fighting over the remote, playing double solitaire and strip poker, and making prank calls to businessmen in the next district.

And waiting.


End file.
